Pam said:
How do I reclaim deleted email?
If using Exchange as your mail server, use the "Tools -> Deleted Item
Recovery" menu. It's use requires your Exchange admin enabled this
feature. Also see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/246153
If not using Exchange, look in the Deleted Items folder. Deletes
actually end up moving items to a different folder (Deleted Items).
Using Shift+Del or deleting items from the Deleted Items folder results
in a "hard delete" or "permanent delete". The items are not physically
deleted from the .pst file but those delete-marked records are hidden by
Outlook. You won't see hard-deleted items.
To get at the delete-marked records within the .pst database, you need
utilities that dig into the message store. Most users don't understand
the structure of the database (including me) so using such low-level
database editors can result in corrupting the database. Make sure to
make a backup copy of the .pst file before editing it.
Outlookspy (not free but trial is fully functional)
For a guided example of using OutlookSpy, read:
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/delete_rr.htm
MDBVU32.EXE (Microsoft)
Free but more difficult to use.
For a guided example, read:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/deletereadreceipt.htm.
Both of these require that the .pst file has not been compacted after
you hard-deleted the items. Delete-marked items are hidden in Outlook's
UI but remain in the database. Compaction is the process of physically
purging those delete-marked records from the database, some reindexing,
and then removing the remaining whitespace inside the database file to
make it smaller. Once compacted, the only way to get at those deleted
records is to restore a .pst file from your periodic backups. If you
don't backup then you deem your data as trivial or reproducible.
